Which came first, national paranoia, conspiracies, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, etc. or simply a nation with people who have too darn much time on their hands? Then again, if you have the last name of Cheney, you can get away with just about any idiocy.

“…Right-wing conspiracy theory tends to focus on efforts by communists and other hard-core, organized socialists, fascists, and advocates of Big Government to impose an absolute tyranny or “New World Order” on Americans in particular and mankind in general in which major industries and products (food, energy, media, money and banking, etc.) would be owned or controlled by government bureaucrats as world monopolies with no private alternatives allowed — and the rights of peaceful people in their lives and properties destroyed completely by political central planning and control. As major steps in the direction of bigger and more intrusive government over our lives and businesses, right wingers can point with dismay at several successful political achievements, made by the organized Left over several decades, such as the enactment of the Income Tax (second plank of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto), the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (fifth plank in the Communist Manifesto), increasing control over education by the national government, inheritance taxes, the UN, the Environmental Protection Agency and various “environmentalist” regulations on private business and land use, and many other political attacks on private property rights and the private plans of individuals over their own lives. From the Right’s point of view, these measures must be abolished or rolled back as soon as it is politically possible to do so — rather than remaining as permanent fixtures in American society. Right wingers would return the government to the restrictions imposed on it by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and (ideally) limit government’s scope to using its powers to combat criminal violence and commercial fraud, and to defend against foreign aggressors, as opposed to trying to organize society through any politically imposed central plan or trying to ameliorate inequalities of wealth or income….”

Left-wing conspiracy theories, on the other hand, tend to see the source of evil in the world as private selfishness, the profit motive, private property itself, American capitalism (as based on private property rights and the profit motive), and irreconcilable “class differences” (between the workers who use the tools and machines and those who own the tools and machines). The Left fears what it perceives as the “economic power” of Big Business, and considers this power to be “exploitative” in a bad sense — an “unfair” advantage of the “strong” over the “weak” resulting from a lack of sufficient government regulation in a free-market economy. It is because of this belief system and the fear of “economic power” that those on the Left agitate for more and more government controls and regulations. Further, the Left seems obsessed with a vision of a politically planned society, in which each individual would be made to conform to a planning matrix devised by supposedly superior philosopher-king bureaucrats. Only in this way, they believe, can war and social disharmony in the world be eradicated forever — and only then will the “economic power” of corporations be stifled….”

Paranoia should now be considered the national past-time. It is nothing new.

Salon

Very few people have the opportunity to take out someone like Alex Jones, even when they have the opportunity to do so. The Pink Flamingo rather likes this description of him.

“...For Alex Jones (or is it Jim Jones) and his million moron army of Kool-Aid drinkers, everything under the sun is a false flag or government set-up, and that includes the sun. Get soup instead of salad, it’s Soros and the NWO instead of a simple mistake. The overwhelming irony is that these are the very same people who perpetually claim government is incompetent and inefficient, yet government is always pulling off these herculean events. Jones is in a seemingly never-ending competition with Glenn Beck for the mouth-breather demographic, and he’s one comment away from becoming a full-blown South Park episode. The man is a journalist like Kim Kardashian is an actress, only one has an enormous arse while the other appears to be an enormous arse….”

Well over a year ago, many of us, those who are now basically excommunicated Republicans because we refused to fall for the idiocy on the far right, began to notice that Matt Drudge was getting a little weird (er). Matt Drudge is a strange duck to begin with. Now, though, with his strange alliance with Alex Jones, he had not just jumped the shark, he’s gone over a megalodon.

If Matt Drudge and Alex Jones were the only ones, we could keep a little bit of reason and sanity in the GOP. Unfortunately, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s World Net Daily, Glenn Beck, and, strangely enough, Coast to Coast, AM. Thanks to FOX Tabloid News, conspiracies are the name of the game. It is the only way to keep the masses under control – by brainwashing. Coast to Coast has about 3 million listeners, many of them fans of FOX, Rush, Beck, and Alex Jones.

Media Matters

This is one of my favorites. Glenn Beck said that he left FOX News to save his soul. The reality is far less glamorous.

“…A Fox News spokesperson explained Monday that conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck left the network not because he was safeguarding his spirituality, but because “he was trying to save his ass” after a massively effective advertiser boycott.

The comment comes by way of Politico’s Mike Allen, who emailed Fox News for a reaction to Beck’s remarks on Friday, when he told a group of students that he left Fox News to save his immortal soul.

“Glenn Beck wasn’t trying to save his soul, he was trying to save his ass,” a Fox News spokesperson told Allen in an email. “Advertisers fled his show and even Glenn knows what that means in our industry. Yet, we still tried to give him a soft landing. Guess no good deed goes unpunished.”…”

It does get old.

The Daily Beast

Did you catch this:

“...I remember being at a dinner party in California when a very prominent Christian asked me if Obama had really canceled the National Day of Prayer (he has not). And I spent countless hours explaining that it is not in fact true that military chaplains are prohibited from praying in Jesus’s name (they can, if they choose to)….”

“…For one thing, conspiracy theories help us cope with distressing events and make sense out of them. Conspiracies assure us that bad things don’t just happen randomly. Conspiracies tell us that someone out there is accountable, however unwittingly or secretly or incomprehensibly, so it’s possible to stop these people and punish them and in due course let everyone else re-establish control over their own lives. Conspiracies also remind us that we shouldn’t blame ourselves for our predicaments; it’s not our fault, it’s them! In these ways, believing in conspiracies serves many of the same self-protective functions as scapegoating….”

The Pink Flamingo must agree with this one!

Aternet

Paranoia is described as “…is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. (e.g. “Everyone is out to get me.”) Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, an incident most people would view as an accident or coincidence, a paranoid person might believe was intentional.…”

The following are conspiracy theories. They have nothing to do with reality.

Barack Obama is a Muslim

Obama was not born in the US

Obama is the anti-christ

Christ and Mary Magdalene were married

New World Order

1999 Russian apartment bombing by the FAB

Pan Am Flight 103

Misc. assassinations

Clinton Body Count

Vince Foster

Philadelphia Experiment

Montauk Project

Tsunami Bomb

Creation of HIV in lab

Knight’s Templer

Floridation

UFOs

Dulce Base

Evil Aliens

Death of Princess Diana

Moon Landing was faked

Paul is dead!

Elvis faked his death

And so forth and so on….

In other words, half this country appears to be batsh*t crazy at any one given time. It really doesn’t matter what party, Democrats or Republicans, there is enough paranoia and conspiracy for everyone!

Do you have a favorite conspiracy theory? I would love to think that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, but the more I study the facts, the less inclined to believe any of them, durn it!

Pssst…. did you hear the one about the Roman Senate plotting to kill Julius Caesar?

2 Comments

One of the most famous UFO stories took place near my hometown. On October 10, 1973, many people including two policemen reported seeing a large silver UFO fly over Tammany Parish in New Orleans. As if this didn’t cause panic enough, the next night was even more eerie. On the Gulf Coast, two men were night fishing on the Pascagoula River. The river, known as “the Singing River” was a place already steeped in legend and lore. Mysterious music, like a swarm of bees in flight, reportedly can be heard there and on a quiet evening one can hear this music. The two men were fishing on a very dark night about 9 PM and all of a sudden they said they heard an unusual buzzing sound behind them. When they turned around they saw a strange looking craft hovering above them. Inside were unusual looking beings about 5 feet tall. The men said they were taken aboard the craft, examined and then were put back on the ground. They said they saw the craft rise into the sky and disappear. They called the local Air Force base, but nobody believed their story. They were referred to the local sheriff’s office, which was closed. They reported their story to the local newspaper and in a few days it became major news all over the country. Experts have never been able to prove the story was false. There was panic on the entire Gulf Coast after the incident, especially after the Coast Guard and local fishermen were said to have had an encounter with an underwater object. After all these years no one has ever been able to explain what really happened on that chilling night of October ll, 1973.

The Pink Flamingo Recommends

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”--Sinclair Lewis

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SJ Reidhead (aka The Pink Flamingo) is a writer based in New Mexico. The author of two published novels, both westerns: Dust Devil and The Second Mrs. Earp and two published works of non-fictions: TRAVESTY: Frank Waters Earp Agenda Exposed and A Church for Helldorado, Endicott Peabody's 1882 Tombstone Diary. One of the leading authorities on the life of Wyatt Earp and Tombstone during the Earp years, she is currently writing a series of murder mysteries set in modern day Tombstone. The author is also working on a book about fashion in the Wild West. When complete, there will be over 2100 unpublished antique photographs dating from 1855-1910.

The author's work has appeared in Wild West, True West, Blogcritics, and The Tombstone Times. Recently the author has had to deal with a father in Stage 4 Alzheimer's Disease. This is leading to a book dealing with the frustrations of dealing with the frustrations of the disease, finance, legal, health-care, and things no one bothers telling families about it.

SJ Reidhead has been involved in Republican politics since she was 'a little kid'. During the Reagan years she was a lobbyist working with various non-profit organizations who were attempting to salvage NASA and the American space program after the disastrous Carter years. Unfortunately, because of the libertarian take-over of the GOP, and the rise of the Tea Parties, as the Republican Party becomes more and more extreme and marginalized, it is impossible to remain loyal to the GOP. The Pink Flamingoremains GOP to make their lives a living hell. As of now, I will never vote for, nor support another Republican, ever.

The Pink Flamingo went on line on October 4, 2005, after the author realized "normal" Republicans were being marginalized as the extreme far right attempts to become the new normal. In November, 2012, The Pink Flamingo, for the first time ever, voted for a Democrat, Barack Obama. Normal will never again apply to the GOP.

THE PINK FLAMINGO STORY

It started out as a joke. During the seven years I worked with the girls of my parish, leading a youth group, one of the things that I stressed were manners. Part of having manners, the way I see it, is to know how to set a proper table, host a party, cater it, and clean up afterward. I was fortunate enough to have a group of very talented girls in my youth group. They learned how to plan for, and execute large church functions, very properly. During one such function I noticed there were several incredibly tacky pink flamingos sitting on the table. Knowing the girls were up to something, I said nothing. A few months later they did the same thing at a function I was hosting at my home. I said nothing. They had a birthday party for me. More pink flamingos appeared - and a joke was born.

Thanks to the girls, all of whom are now grown, I have a collection of pink flamingos. It has become an ongoing joke. When I began working on my political blog, I realized the only possibly title was The Pink Flamingo!